The real reason restaurant wine lists are boring – spoiler, restaurants are not to blame

We can't ignore the hidden bottleneck between wineries and restaurants.

I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken drum. However, every time I see articles in the news around the lack of interest in wine, I tend to look to the root problem instead of the coverups, and every time it points to the same place. Wholesalers. Wholesalers. Wholesalers.  

This time, I was reading an interesting study from the Wine Market Council about young adults finding restaurant wine lists uninspiring. While they make some good points about presentation and organization, they left out, possibly intentionally, the massive, glowing, elephant in the room: wholesalers. 

Let me be candid. As someone who's spent decades in the wine industry, I'm tired of watching people dance around this issue. We keep talking about symptoms in the industry - boring wine lists, lack of customer engagement, poor storytelling - without addressing the root cause. Our current wholesale distribution system is completely limiting the potential of restaurant wine programs, and it's time we talked about it. 

Here's what's happening: Wholesalers are aggressively consolidating their portfolios. They are dropping smaller brands, thus limiting the selection available to restaurants. They claim it's about efficiency, but really, they are prioritizing their bottom line over the health of our domestic industry. 

The impact? Restaurants can't access diverse, local, interesting wines, that their customers want or may even get more excited about. They're stuck with whatever major labels their assigned wholesaler deems profitable enough to carry. It's like telling a restaurant they can only buy ingredients from Costco - sure, the quality might be fine, but where's the unique local produce, the specialty items, the artisanal products that make a menu special? 

Think about this: When a winery can't sell directly to a restaurant, we lose so much more than just a sale. We lose the story behind the wine. We lose the connection between producers and servers. We lose the education that happens when a winemaker sits down with a restaurant's staff and shares their craft. Instead, we get the sanitized, corporate version filtered through a wholesale rep who's juggling hundreds of other brands. 

The Wine Market Council study talks about young adults wanting better descriptions on wine lists. Of course they do! But how can restaurants write compelling descriptions when they've never met the winemaker or don’t really care for the product or when they're choosing from the same limited wholesale catalog as every other restaurant in town? 

Let's talk solutions. The most obvious fix is to allow wineries to sell directly to restaurants. This isn't some radical idea - it's already working in some states (California, Oregon). When wineries can build direct relationships with restaurants: 

• They can share their stories effectively.

• They can offer competitive pricing.

• They can collaborate on special selections.

• They can provide staff training and education.

• Most importantly, they can help create the kind of diverse, engaging wine programs that new consumers want.

The wholesale lobby tells you this would be chaos. They'll raise concerns about regulation and tax collection. But let's be real - we live in an age where technology can track every bottle from winery to table. We don't need an inefficient middleman to ensure collections of taxes. Wholesalers are just looking for their piece of the transaction, as they have been for nearly 100 years. 

The irony is that wholesalers are shooting themselves in the foot. By constraining selection and stifling innovation, they're contributing to wine's decline among new consumers. They're literally shrinking their future market in an attempt to control today's profits.  

I understand change is hard. I’ve been at the center of wine industry change for 20 years. But if we're serious about revitalizing wine culture and engaging the next generation of wine consumers, we need to be honest about what's holding us back. It's not just about prettier wine lists or better descriptions - it's about fundamentally rethinking how wine gets from producers to restaurants. 

Until we address this core issue, we'll keep seeing studies about young adults finding wine boring and uninspiring. We'll keep having conversations about symptoms while ignoring the disease. And our wine industry will continue to decline. 

We need legislative groups such as the Congressional Wine Caucus to engage in this domestic issue that is significantly impacting 97% of the producers. 

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